The Dispatch Podcast - Rep. Mike Gallagher on Afghanistan
Episode Date: August 27, 2021Rep. Mike Gallagher joins Sarah and Steve on the podcast and tries (with no luck) to understand the logic behind the Biden administration’s withdrawal plan in Afghanistan. Gallagher puts it quite bl...untly, “The whole thing is a mess, and there are very few options we have right now.” The Marine Corps veteran explains what he’d like to see from the Biden administration going forward and how the GOP should handle national security issues going forward. Plus, find out what brutal book the congressman just finished reading (hint: it’s about Sarah’s home state). Show Notes: Office Space Michael Bolton scene Rep. Gallagher’s Small Wars Journal piece with plenty of Office Space references Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Qwynne Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined by Steve Hayes. And this
week, we are talking to Congressman Mike Gallagher. He represents Wisconsin's eighth district
in Congress. By the way, he's a seventh generation Wisconsin native. So no question about how
he got on this podcast, Steve. But Congressman Gallagher is a former Marine. He did Intel in
Iraq, was deployed several times. Absolutely has thoughts on what is going to
going on in Afghanistan.
Let's dive right in.
Congressman, we are mourning for our service members today.
And there has been so much that has led up to that moment and plenty of second-guessing
and things we could have, should have done differently.
But starting from today, what should the administration do moving forward?
Well, I mean, it's hard to set aside what happened.
I mean, I think certainly every Marine is grieving for the loss of 12 Marines and one corpsmen.
You know, it will go down as one of the darkest days in Marine Corps history.
You know, one is reminded of Beirut, Maya Gez, things like that.
And so just a real gut punch.
And your heart goes out to the families and, you know, the wives and the mothers and sisters
and everyone who's anxiously waiting to hear from their loved ones who were deployed downrange.
So very sad day, very tragic.
Where do we go from here?
You know, I have encouraged the Biden administration not only rhetorically but through legislation to
abandon the arbitrary August 31st deadline. I guess I shouldn't call it arbitrary. My assumption is
it's it has to do with September 11th, 2021 being the Biden's preferred date to get out of the
country and then you do some backwards planning and August 31st is the timeline that is necessary
and the Taliban are now exploiting that and threatened us by saying if you're there a second later
than August, you know, midnight, August 31st, we're going to do some bad stuff. It wasn't just
me encouraging them to abandon that date, at least in behind closed doors,
in classified sessions, there was a group of bipartisan legislators and some Democrats,
particularly Democrats who'd served in Afghanistan who were very, very critical of the administration.
I know Democrats who were in the Oval Office this week, urging the president to abandon that
timeline, at least commit to staying until we get every American that wants to get out,
out. And I think that's the only thing we can do right now.
I'm not deluding myself that we're going to reverse the broader decision to get out.
that we're suddenly going to realize that it'd be nice to have Bagram, not just as a counterterrorism base,
but as an asset in the long-term competition with China and as a way to threaten their space and
counter space assets on their western flank. But at a minimum, I do believe there's more we can do
to get all of our people out and get our Afghan allies out. And I think this idea that we're
somehow going to rely on the interest of the Taliban in order to build a post-a-
August 31st bridge, as one defense official described it to me, for those Afghan allies that we know
we're not going to be able to get out, is a total fantasy. And I'm fascinated by the language the Biden
administration keeps deploying about the Taliban's interests. I think the president talked about it
yesterday, right? It's in the Taliban's interests to, I forget exactly what he said, but basically
be a security partner with us and help us get our people out. I don't think the Biden administration,
in general and the president in particular has any freaking clue what's in the Taliban's
interest, right? I mean, I guess the Taliban, yes, has an interest in us getting out. I understand
that. But this argument they're making that because the Taliban wants humanitarian assistance
post-August 31st, wants a functioning international airport post-August 31st, means that we somehow
will have leverage because the Taliban is this rational actor sitting back and calculating their
economic utility, I think is a total naive fantasy and represents like the worst of political
science grafted on to the complexities of war. What's in the Taliban's interest, since we've
surrendered, is to make that surrender as humiliating and painful as possible. And then more to
the point, the Taliban's not a monolithic entity, right? All it takes is one stupid person,
you know, taking Americans hostage, which I have reason to believe Americans have already
been taken hostage. And I think the problem is going to get worse post-allel.
August 31st, to start to really mess up your neat and tidy theories about the Taliban
acting in the way a Davos attendee would act, right?
So I don't know.
The whole thing is a mess.
And there are very few options we have right now.
And so all we can do is just get our people out and not leave anybody behind.
Steve.
Let me pick up on that because I think it's really one of the sort of key.
failings of U.S. policy in Afghanistan over the past three administrations, really.
And that is this desire to see the Taliban as something the Taliban is not.
It started with the Obama administration, where we had negotiations with the Taliban
as if they would be partners in peace.
You saw it with the Trump administration.
When you had senior Trump administration official, including the President, Secretary of State,
Mike Pompeo,
to insist that the Taliban would be America's counterterrorism partner in Afghanistan,
fighting al-Qaeda and others. And now you're seeing this from the Biden administration at
sort of a greater scale. What's the thinking behind this? I mean, you spent a lot of time
thinking about foreign policy. You understand kind of the complexities here. What's the charitable
understanding of that?
The charitable understanding.
Well, listen, I think the honest argument that the Biden administration thus far does not
want to make, although I think it's sort of what Biden's getting at with this, hey, this
was always going to happen stuff he's been saying, is someone had to rip off the Band-Aid.
It was always going to be painful.
We're ripping off the Band-Aid.
And then lying behind that honest argument is a cynical.
argument that perhaps Ron Clayne is making to Biden, which is this is going to be a bad news cycle,
we'll manage it, and then it will blow over. And that's all it is. And then a month from now,
no one will care about Afghanistan. But more directly to answer your question, there seems to be
another talking point that I've just detected coming from all these Biden people, which is
you've heard a few of them say, whenever they say the Taliban, whenever they say ISIS K,
ISIS Khorasan, they'll say, which is the sworn enemy of the Taliban, right?
And this reminds me of kind of the argument that was made to justify the pullout of Iraq
and also by extension to justify the pullout or the rapprochement with Iran, which was a suggestion
that, okay, we didn't really need to worry about like the role Shia militias were paying in
Iraq because they're fighting ISIS.
And this is sort of the Sarah Palin let Allah sort them out argument, right?
It's these groups hate each other, right?
ISIS defected from al-Qaeda, and they're now sworn enemy.
So, of course, we can just let them kill each other, and that's all going to work out.
Well, that doesn't work, right?
Because when Salafi jihadists fight each other, they start to attract a bunch of
Salafi jihadists to that fight.
And the people that tend to get killed are not just crazy Salafi jihadists.
It's a lot of civilians and a lot of our allies that are stuck in the middle.
It's too early to tell, but I think there's like a
similar thing going on here where they're starting to suggest that, okay, the Taliban,
you know, we can't trust them, but we have mutual interest. They're, they're going to kill
ISIS-K guys. And really, all we care about is al-Qaeda and ISIS-K. So there's a workable framework
here. Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean, I think that I think that's right. But I would
suggest it's even worse than your depiction makes it look, because we're actively taking sides
in this scenario. So it's not just like let them kill themselves and sort it out, which would be kind
of the logical end of the non-interventionist argument, right? Like it's not our business, it's hands off,
they figure it out. In this case, what we're saying is, no, we are taking a side. And our side is
the side of the Taliban. And, you know, the deputy leader of the Taliban, yes, he's Saraj Akani. Yes,
we have $10 million bounty on his head. Yes, he's long been involved with al-Qaeda. Yes, the
Haqani Network has killed Americans, actively fought Americans for two decades in Afghanistan,
but they could be useful to us right now.
I mean, I guess the, I want to go beyond just criticizing because obviously this is something
that gets me very fired up, but I'd like to try to understand the logic.
I mean, I really would like to understand what's, what is the case there?
Like, what do they think is likely to happen by teaming up with or,
pretending to partner with the group that harbored al-Qaeda and prepared the ground for the 9-11
attacks.
So are they going to be the ones providing us, given that our intelligence collection capabilities
will be severely impacted by this pullout, right?
I mean, the CIA needs support to collect human intelligence.
There are limits even be a sagan to what you can collect.
Are they going to be providing us the intel that's going to be driving or targeting?
That's the other thing I've never, in the past six months, heard anybody explain to me.
And I'm open to entertaining the most charitable version of this argument.
If we're doing over the horizon counterterrorism, how does that work?
How do you generate the intel?
If you don't have intel.
How do you get over the impossible geography that Afghanistan presents?
Our drones can't fly forever.
They need fuel to fly.
Particularly since Putin said, hell no, I'm not good.
to allow you to establish alternative bases in some of the other stands, another humiliation for
America in this mess? How does it work? I'm open to the idea. If we can do it over the horizon,
that'd be great. I just don't think it's possible as a matter of geography and math. And as an
intel guy, I mean, it's just a fantasy to think you're going to have these beautiful target
sets appear without the ability to collect intelligence on the ground. You know, the other thing I find
fascinating? I'm sorry to go on. Because these are all just, I mean, listen, we all,
all got arguments and we need to test these arguments against reality. Okay, Jake Sullivan seems to
suggest that we, okay, don't worry about our commitments in the Indo-Pacific, the real priority
theater. They're sacrosanct. The people of Taiwan should not be afraid. Japan, et cetera,
et cetera. We're going to have more bandwidth to focus on China and this won't have a bad
reputational effect. Okay. If I grant the idea, and I don't, by the way, that there will be
no reputational impact from the pullout in Afghanistan.
Then I'm putting all my eggs in the back,
and that we really just need to focus on the Indo-Pacific.
For that, I'm putting all my eggs in the basket of the balance of power in the
Indo-Pacific being favorable to the United States.
And increasingly, it is less favorable.
So even if the pull-out in Afghanistan doesn't affect the credibility of our commitments,
The fact that we are failing to field conventional assets in the first island chain with the appropriate alacrity that we need to undermines our military deterrence in that region, the so-called priority region, in part because of the Biden administration's defense budget and some of the stupid things it wants to do and some of the nonsense that the Secretary of Defense is talking about with integrated deterrence, which is a buzz phrase to cover up for an unwillingness to invest in convention.
hard power. So none of this makes sense to me. Maybe I just don't understand it, but I haven't
seen anyone in the Biden administration come up and make a coherent argument. So what is the role of
Congress at this point? You mentioned legislation that you proposed. We still have the AUMF,
the authorized use of military force out there. Was Congress going to start flexing a little here?
Will it matter after 2022 if Republicans retake the House or will this be a long memory?
What would you say you do here, Congressman?
office space explains the world by the way
that is man or at least explains
it's good that he picked up on that
yeah what would you say
why should I have to change my name
he's the one who sucks
that is a Michael Bolton reference
for those people who have not seen office space
I want to check me on this
I believe I once wrote
an article about intelligence
and counterinsurgency that had office space
references in it. So I forget where it was. It might have been in the Small Wars Journal when I
was a precocious First Lieutenant. So the legislation that I had on the floor, which was the
previous question to this bigger $5 trillion rule, it's a fancy parliamentary. Basically,
we get, the Republicans get one shot to try and, you know, send these Democrat bills back
to committee. And my bill was that shot. And it basically would have required the administration
to do daily reporting to us on the number of Americans.
Americans left in the country, as well as the number of Afghan seeking refuge, and then would
have prevented them from pulling out all troops until we'd gotten all Americans out.
Obviously, that raises constitutional questions about the role of Congress, but I'm a Article 1
conservative.
We can get into that if you'd like.
So I still think it would be wise for us to reconvene and to try and at least get the administration
to be more forthcoming on their efforts to get Americans out of Congress.
country. Again, I'm increasingly, you know, resigned to the fact that Biden is inflexible on
the August 31st date, but I still think it's useful for us to push them on just the basic
numbers of people that we're leaving behind. After August 31st, I do think we need to demand
that they come to us and explain how are we doing counterterrorism in Afghanistan and in Central
Asia and throughout the Middle East. And what's it going to require? And if we're, we now have
have, you know, in the immediate $6 billion that we're not going to spend on Afghanistan,
how are we best investing that money? As for the AUMF, you know, we did, I think, somewhat
productively pass the repeal of the, or in the House at least, repeal of the Iraq AUMF. The 2001
AMF is a much harder discussion. My view is that it's a long past time for us to repeal and
replace that AUMF with something that could have a no tactical or geographic limits in it, but
a five-year sunset, perhaps, that would force Congress to revisit it every five years and then
have robust reporting requirements in terms of the groups that were actually targeting. And then
there's this question of accountability that we're wrestling with. You know, I do think the administration
people need to be held accountable, whether that's the resignation of the Secretary of State or
Defense or National Security Advisor. I don't know. You know, I highly doubt the president himself is going to
resign. I'm not sure we'd be trading up by putting Kamala Harris in that role, but someone needs
to be held accountable. In Congress, in a democratically controlled house, I would expect to do
nothing, but if we retake the House in 2022, I do think we need to do a thorough investigation
and hold people accountable for this epic operational failure, this planning failure.
I early had called it an intelligence failure. I sort of want to retract that. I'm not exactly sure
it was an intelligence failure. One, as an intelligence guy, there are no intelligence
successes, only intelligence failures. And I think the intelligence community did warn about the
rapidity with which the country could collapse. They had various timelines for that collapse.
But I think ultimately it was a leadership failure, starting with the president and then a
planning failure that extends to the State Department and DOD. And so I think Congress has a very
important role to play in terms of investigating that. And I think all Republicans need to sort of
rediscover our traditional arguments for, you know, a conservative internationalist policy.
And I think that's a winning issue for us politically as well.
The final thing I'd say is on that, you know, I do think the traditional argument is that
foreign policy doesn't matter politically.
I got it.
I understand.
But in 2016, at least, I don't think that was the case.
You know, as I've told Steve, we may have talked about before, you know, and what I think
has very bizarre and tragic echoes.
to what we're dealing with right now. The threat from ISIS really did affect people in 2016,
because it wasn't just a, oh, my gosh, there's a terrorist state carved out in the heart of
the Middle East, the size of Indiana. It was a string of terrorist attacks across the world to
include in America. We had domestic terrorism. San Bernardino, but Paul's Nightclub had a very
immediate political impact because Hillary Clinton canceled her first appearance that she was going to do
with Barack Obama on the campaign trail, which is going to be in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
And she infamously never came back to Wisconsin because of that attack.
And so I think there becomes a point at which people sort of feel like the world is getting
less safe and it's affecting them domestically, as well as, I think, a point at which, you know,
the humiliation of America on the world stage triggers some Jacksonian impulse.
And people, even like more isolationist-minded Americans are like, I don't like that we're getting
pushed around.
This is just this, this is not how it should be with America.
So our, our producer, Ryan Brown, has actually located your article with office-based references in Small Wars Journal.
We will put that in the show notes.
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Let me pick up on that point that you are making, though, because the form
policy positions you outlined for the Republican Party are somewhat at odds with the foreign policy
as practiced by the Trump administration. As I said, you had Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo running
cover effectively for the Taliban. The roots of the catastrophe that we're seeing now, I mean,
we should be very clear. I think Joe Biden and his administration bear the blame for what we're
seeing. Full stop. End of discussion. But the roots of this policy, the path, really started in
the Obama administration, but the pace accelerated considerably with the horrendous deal that
the Trump administration struck in February of 2020 and then sold to the American public,
the key sort of plank of that deal being the U.S. is going to work with the Taliban.
This is kinder, kinder, gentler Taliban. And that was undertaken, in my view, because Donald Trump
wanted a less involved America.
You know, in that sense, there is a fair amount of continuity between what we're seeing from
the Biden administration and the Trump administration.
How much do you think you have to sort of wrestle back a traditional Republican foreign policy
when the party at large has moved in that Trumpy direction?
My honest answer is, I don't know.
I think the flaw in the Doha deal,
were there at least two glaring flaws in the Doha deal, right?
One was just that the Afghan government really wasn't involved in, uh,
deliberately excluded at the Taliban, yes.
I still don't know what Zal Khalazad, what is, what he was doing and what his role was
and all this.
And so, uh, so that, that, uh, kind of doomed it to failure as well as, as you lay out,
just this idea that the Taliban was going to be killing, uh, al-Qaeda for us, I think was,
was wrongheaded and deeply flawed.
I guess their counterargument is that it was conditions-based.
The Taliban violated the Doha agreement as early as March of 2021,
and therefore had Trump been in the second term,
he would have done things differently.
I guess being a counterfactual, we'll never know.
But the Doha deal was flawed.
And I think it gets to this broader issue within the Republican Party.
party, which is that, you know, this sort of this, we need to end endless wars and that somehow,
you know, by precipitously pulling out a couple thousand troops from Afghanistan in order to get
that mission accomplished moment, we're somehow going to be setting ourselves up for success
geopolitically. I think my own view, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq and Syria, actually,
is that we arrived through a very inefficient process of trial and error at a sustainable
posture, which is for a very modest and small investment of U.S. resources, largely special
operators and largely enablers, right? Working by with and through local allies on the ground
who are bearing the brunt of the fighting, and we provide intel, we provide logistical support,
we provide, you know, air support, et cetera, et cetera, for a small investment with a light
footprint, you can have a huge impact. Or at least you can secure very narrowly defined.
national security objectives. And that, to me, is the best way to avoid a intensely chaotic
situation that requires you to divert your attention from more important national security
priorities. And I do think China is a much more important national security priority over
the long term. So I don't know. I think we've got to make the case that, okay, if your view is
were over-extended in the Middle East, and we really need to invest resources in the Indo-Pacific
to focus on China. The best way to do that is to be forward-deployed with a small footprint
working with local allies and thereby avoid a complete collapse of our position.
Avoid what we saw happen in Iraq in the second half of the Obama administration.
And then I think, as I alluded to before, I really think we failed to make the case
for why Bogram was valuable in the China fight,
not just as a counterterrorism base,
but as an asset in the long-term fight against China.
And then obviously, I think the other controversial
aspect of U.S. foreign policy
within the Republican Party is the role of allies.
And I do think there's a wing
that thinks our allies stink
and they're more trouble than they're worth.
Ironically, this is the view of a lot of progressives as well,
particularly when it comes to our Middle East allies.
So I think we really need to do a better job
job of not only talking about the value of our allies, but actually working with our allies to
develop common war plants, right? So, for example, the debate about NATO is always about
our allies don't contribute 2%. They don't mean they're 2%. Well, we shouldn't care as much
about the inputs as the outputs, right? Like, it doesn't matter as much if Greece is paying 2%
of their GDP contributing that to NATO. It matters more.
more, what is Greece going to contribute to the actual mission of deterring Russia by denial?
And we don't do that in NATO.
We certainly don't do that with our allies in the Indo-Pacific.
And to this day, no one in the Pentagon has sat down with me in front of a map and said,
okay, when the Taiwan scenario happens, here's what we're doing, here's what the Aussies
are bringing to the fight, here's what the Japanese are bringing to the fight, here's
what the Taiwanese are capable of right now.
that's an area where I think we can actually have a more powerful and practical argument
in terms of what our allies contribute to our own defense and to their own defense that
we just have failed to do recently, if that makes sense.
Sorry, I've only had one cup of coffee.
I'm not making a lot of sense.
I want you to tell us where you're going from here, and I'm curious as you meet our newest
countrymen, and I'm so excited to call them that, by the way, these people who have shown
such a love of the United States.
I'm curious whether you'll be proselytizing the Packers
or if you have some other reason for a meeting with them.
Well, that's a requirement.
Anyone who moves to Wisconsin,
even if they're already an American citizen,
has to renounce their previous sports allegiances
and root for the Packers.
And chug a lot of beer.
It's a weird, it's a weird quirk of our state constitution.
So I'm going to Fort McCoy just to see what their process is
for dealing with a lot of these Afghan refugees.
You know, I think, you know, obviously there's some concern in conservative circles
about the vetting requirements of how many people we're letting in.
You know, my own view is particularly if you qualify for the SIV program,
if you fought with us, you know, we should be doing everything possible to get you out of
the country and making sure you're eligible for the SIV program.
It has very high-level requirements.
It's all well and good, and we should have robust vetting procedures.
but I'm hoping to, you know, provided we have a good discussion with the military leaders down at Fort McCoy,
alleviate some of those concerns with my constituents.
And I really do think it will have damaging consequences for our national security and our ability to fight in the future if we abandon our Afghan allies,
particularly those who fought with us.
And if we turn our back on people are eligible, in particular for the SIV program,
And then for people that aren't eligible for that program, I'm aware of a bunch of private philanthropic efforts underway right now to charter private planes and resettle Afghan women, for example, civil society leaders, a journalist in third party countries, African countries, Serbia, North Macedonia, et cetera, et cetera.
But in many cases, they just can't get permission to land or state I've heard is actively telling people don't get on airplanes, don't come to the airport.
And so these chartered planes land and maybe three people get out on a plane that could have taken hundreds.
That to me is a tragedy.
So there's a lot more work that needs to be done in terms of getting our allies out of the country.
And then I think alleviating concerns of a lot of people about our vetting procedures.
So hopefully this is a step in that direction on my visit today.
Well, as a Texan, please let them know about the Great Republic to their south.
We'd love to have them there.
We have some amazing sports teams, including, unfortunately, one that cheated in the World Series not too long ago.
So, you know, there's always that.
Well, have you ever read Empire of the Summer Moon?
No.
It is an amic, oh my gosh, it is.
I just read this book.
It's about Texas.
It's about like Texas settlers fighting Comanchees.
It is so brutal.
And it is, it is an, and it's a, it ends up being a story about technology because the Comanchees were kicking our butt because they had better technology.
They were better horsemen and their ability to fire arrows at a rapid pace what just totally dominated us.
And so until we had advances in repeating rifles and pistols, we couldn't turn the tide.
And so I highly recommend that book.
But it's not for the faint of heart.
It is so, so brutal.
So you think your life is hard.
Imagine these Texas rangers and settlers and their battles with the Comanche's.
That's my Texas reading.
Yeah, no, like this podcast has had it all. We have a great article that we're posting in our show notes that talks about the office space pathology. You have a book recommendation. This is, this is all you can ask for in a 25-minute podcast. Thank you, congressman. Safe travels. And welcome those new events.
Thank you.
I'm going to be able to be.